Cookin again

[Dannyalcatraz]

Sausage stroganoff for dinner tonight:

Spoiler: Recipe

Ingredients:

1 box Pasta
olive oil
2 lb Sausage, cut into medallions (I used a simple, smoked country sausage)
1 package medium Portobello mushrooms, sliced
1 medium Yellow onion, diced
1 bunch Green onion, sliced relatively thin
1 bulb of garlic, cleaned, crushed & gross chopped
1 lg Jalapeño, as finely chopped as possible*
1/2 bunch of fresh parsley
1 lg tablespoon dried parsley
1 can beef broth
1 can cream of mushrooms soup
1/3 container Sour cream
1.5 tablespoon Paprika
Salt & Black pepper to taste


Cooking Gear:
Stock pot
Spider or Lg slotted spoon
6qt or bigger straight-sided sauté pan or Dutch oven
Lg spoon
3-4 small mixing bowls
small spatula or spurtle


After slicing your ingredients, you can set them aside in bowls for control: 1 with the onions, garlic & pepper; 1 with the sausage, one with the mushrooms. (The rest can simply wait on the cutting board.)

Coat bottom of the sauté pan/Dutch oven with a thin layer of olive oil. Sauté your sausage medallions over medium heat, stirring occasionally until you get a little color on them and some browning on your pot. Remove the medallions and deglaze the pan with @1/4 of beef broth.

Start boiling your pasta in the stock pot. Monitor this carefully so as not to over or undercook the pasta. When it’s cooked, use your spider or slotted spoon to remove it from the pot into one of the mixing bowls- the timing is such that one WILL be empty.

Sauté the mix of onions, garlic and jalapeño over medium heat until they start to soften and there is more browning in your pan. Deglaze with 1/4 of beef broth again and add mushrooms, cooking until they start to soften. Add the parsley, then return the sausage to the pan.

Mix quickly, then add cream of mushroom soup. Use the last of your beef broth and your spatula to rinse out the soup can, and add that to the pan. Add the paprika and 1/3 container of sour cream to the pan, then give the pot a thorough mixing.

Taste and season with salt & pepper.

Add the pasta to the sauté pan with all the other ingredients. Gently mix it in so that it will all be coated with sauce, but the pasta won’t be broken.

Remove from heat and let stand a few minutes, then plate.





* the finer the chop, the more evenly the jalapeño’s flavor and heat will be distributed.

 

[prabe]

Sausage stroganoff for dinner tonight:

That's going to be ... there's a type of sausage you use that I gather is similar to andouille, but isn't andouille and it's fallen out of my head. Looks really good. I'm not a big fan of mushrooms, but I'll cope if it's Stroganoff.

Our dinner tonight was variant sawmill gravy (made with chorizo, with sauteed onion and bell pepper) on pita bread. Not as involved as Stroganoff, but tasty.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That's going to be ... there's a type of sausage you use that I gather is similar to andouille, but isn't andouille and it's fallen out of my head. Looks really good. I'm not a big fan of mushrooms, but I'll cope if it's Stroganoff.

Our dinner tonight was variant sawmill gravy (made with chorizo, with sauteed onion and bell pepper) on pita bread. Not as involved as Stroganoff, but tasty.

I just used a simple smoked country sausage for this. People were scared when I said there was a jalapeño in there, but I diced it so finely, it’s heat and flavor were well distributed.

 

[prabe]

I just used a simple smoked country sausage for this. People were scared when I said there was a jalapeño in there, but I diced it so finely, it’s heat and flavor were well distributed.

Fair enough. You use enough of that other sausage that I just presumed. Sorry. (Also, please refresh my memory?)

Also, worried about one jalapeño in a batch of Stroganoff? That sounds like some of my middle-age or older whitebread relatives. ;-)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Fair enough. You use enough of that other sausage that I just presumed. Sorry. (Also, please refresh my memory?)

I use a variety of sausages in my cooking, including a Louisiana hot sausage. (FWIW, I edited in the recipe in the original Stroganoff post!)

News flash: I love sausage! Unfortunately I love it a lot more than anyone else in the family, so I can only get certain ones when dining out.

Also, worried about one jalapeño in a batch of Stroganoff? That sounds like some of my middle-age or older whitebread relatives. ;-)

While I have a respectable heat tolerance, I’m currently unique in the house in that regard. Our houseguest is an Irish American stereotype, my Dad has never been big on heat (always got mild Popeye’s chicken), and a thrush infection killed Mom’s heat tolerance a few years ago.

It WAS the biggest, fattest jalapeño I could find, though. But I diced it as finely as I could in order to distribute the pepper’s flavor and heat as evenly as possible. Old chef’s trick I learned a long time ago, but strongly reinforced in an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations.

Whatever the seasoning or ingredient, that superfine distribution prevents big chunks of it from landing on your tongue. That leads to subtlety of flavor with most things, but with peppers, it also means nobody gets a sudden rude surprise. That also means- as Bourdain’s guest pointed out- you can use MORE of the peppers, emphasizing their flavor over the impact of their heat.

The reverse being true as well, of course, is why so many chefs use big flaky kosher or sea salt for finishing or as a table seasoning. Big flakes = big flavor impact. The same principle applies in things like Indian cuisine, where some spices are barely processed before inclusion in a dish.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Did a rib roast & baked some diced baby Yukon golds to go with it, along with some leftover collard greens. Because I forgot to label its mass when I put it in the freezer, I had to guess its size, so it undercooked just a mite. Brightside: that means it won’t be OVERcooked when the leftovers are reheated. There’s five 1” thick boneless ribeye steaks in my fridge now, plus a decent sized slab of beef ribs.

Hmmm...if Dad doesn’t go caveman on those ribs, I might use them to make a stew or some such...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

When I was cleaning up after my rib roast last night, I noticed a pool of grease under the roasting pan. I assumed I had just been extra clumsy transferring the meat from the pan to the cutting board. I had a lot of other dishes to do, so I didn’t get to cleaning that pan last night,

So I thought nothing of it when I set it to soak today. Well, I just noticed a puddle of soapy water on the floor next to where the pan was soaking. At first, I thought I had merely continued in my clumsinesss and not noticed me splashing when I poured. So I toweled it up, and put the towel in the laundry room.

...only to be told I missed a lot. Sure enough, there was another puddle,

My big, deep Le Creuset ceramic roasting pan had an 8” long hairline crack that was seeping. Doubly irritating, it was mom scored for $50 in a clearance sale.

A moment of silence.

 

[prabe]

@Dannyalcatraz That's a bummer. You can get replacements for not-crazy amounts of money (Calphalon make a nice one for ~$100, IIRC), but it sounds like a bit of a mess in the present.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don’t know that I NEED to. I have a lot of pots. And while that one was damn convenient, I have reasonable substitutes...some of which I haven’t used since I bought them,

 

[prabe]

There's definitely something to be said for using what you have.